Eisenhower’s famous farewell address speech. People were stunned when the military genius and American Hero offered this sober critique of the emerging Military Industrial Complex.

From the speech:

“… we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.”

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to recognize its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or our democratic processes”

This is in response to Fareed Zakaria’s blog post entitled, “Fareed Zakaria on Donald Trump and Coded Racism” which appeared on his Global Public Square blog on April 22nd, 2011, where he ‘mans the helm’ at CNN on Sundays at 10am and 1pm eastern time.

Fareed seemed to be an otherwise thoughtful analyst of the geo-political scene when he waded into the mainstream media pool back in 2002, but this piece from his blog is just egregious and requires immediate attention from yours truly. Zakaria has outdone himself here, he uses the ‘trump card’ of racism to taint Donald Trump as a racist in a banal Straw Man analogy, which at least unfurls as an ‘informal fallacy.’

Nobody rooted for Mr Zakaria more than I when he showed up on our TV screens in the scary post-911 world. We were happy to see an Indian born practicing Muslim with a kind persona and classy presence disagree with the neo-conservatives while getting smiles from other liberals. It promised to be a kindler, gentler world where more international liberal and progressive voices were to be heard along staunch US conservative pundits and the usual Euro-centric Imperialist drivel.

This of course was not to be the case, instead of a more diverse perspective full of international voices, we have more colorful faces and accents, but the same narrow liberal/conservative ideologues logging in long hours on our TV screens. The new class of media pundits and commentators are a more diverse ‘rainbow of colors’, but their rainbow does not arch toward justice, as Martin Luther King envisioned our shared path to be, but arches toward the status-quo, and the further eroding of our civil rights. ‘We the people’ need to bend the Rainbow of Truth in the direction of our shared vision of equal rights and protection under the law, with due process afforded all.

You will have proof here that Mr Zakaria is unabashedly steering the conversation away from real ‘Populism’ from his podium atop CNN. It is egregious to say the least, especially when you consider the baton was passed to him and others by the likes of Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite and to an extent the investigative reporting style of shows like “60 Minutes.”

With the new corporate media and figures like Zakaria, we do not get any real investigative style reporting, but ’60 minutes’ of crosstalk interlaced with Democrat or Republican talking points book-ended by portrayal of the ‘startled masses’ as ignorant sheep or raging lunatics.

This is the landscape that our pundits like to wallow in, but for what reason? Our sons and daughters desperate lives used are used as spectacle, to uphold the firmament of the great lie of ‘Social Darwinism’, with the uber-beautiful and super-rich are coronated and celebrated as royalty on the stage of rising and falling American Idols.

I have spent enough time working in marketing and media to understand that most if not all of these ‘talking heads’ are just paid actors who clamor for the glamor of their positions. Zakaria and others want to be judges and juries on this distorted socio-political scene. Whether Fareed is unwittingly misinforming the public or not is relatively unimportant, for he has willingly chosen to align himself with his corporate masters whom he so gleefully shills for.

Zakaria, or ‘Z’ as I like to refer to him, is no ‘Zorro’, he does not ride around on horseback gallantly supporting his countrymen in their struggle against ‘El Patron’, but rides around in Limousines and Private Jets sharing cocktails with his intelligentsia friends. Z’s compadres in the ‘Media Elite’ are now concerned that their usual Right/Left game-plan is going to be flanked by a new Populist movement, with the real players being Ron Paul, Donald Trump, Jesse Ventura, and possibly Dennis Kucinich.

There is a mass mainstream media movement afoot that smears and belittles anyone that is not part of the Duo-Oligopoly:

* Oligarchy:

“a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution : the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president.
• a state governed by such a group : the English aristocratic oligarchy of the 19th century.
• government by such a group”

* Oligopoly:

“a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.”

A duo-oligopoly refers to the Oligarchs who have monopolized the infrastructure of our Democratic Republic, and are now behind a false Democratic/Republican Party paradigm that the Establishment Media push on the confused public. Think of it as good cop/ bad cop, a la “Hill St Blues” or “Law and Order CSI.’

But this real life soap-opera narrative we could call “Wash DC Spin BS” is professional socio-political theater where the frustrated actors and maladjusted social predators run amok with our country moneys and laws, paying allegiance to their gods of greed and power. Without mercy or shame they raid and plunder our cherished institutions, like any purveyor of empire would do.

It is high theater in the hallowed halls of our hollow Republic and the emperor has no clothes, yet we do nothing as Shakespeare and Moliere roll in their graves

The ‘establishment media pundits’ have to pimp for their corporate masters. The corporatised media are afraid of real populist movements, that is why they constantly try and smear the Donald Trumps and Ron Pauls of the world. I kid you not, Ron Paul, the front runner in many polls, running neck and neck with Romney in most states, is not even mentioned alongside other Republican contenders in Zakaria’s article.

Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and others, are treated like lepers by MSNBC, CNN, FOX, while the talking heads just love to blabber ad nauseum about a Sarah Palin or a Michelle Bachman, both fringe candidates at this point. While Palin was McCain’s choice for VP, everybody knows that the intent was to lure Ron Paul supporters to the Republican ticket in 2008.

Although Fox promoted the new faces of “The Tea Party” movement on it’s programs in the post-inagaural ‘health care town hall debate’ media frenzy, the original ‘Tea Party’ began with Ron Paul during the 2008 election and was astro-turfed by corporate Republicans for their own benefit.

The astro-turfing of those original Tea Parties was lead by the Fox News/Republican cabal which orchestrated the ‘big show’, but the left-wing of the duo-oligopical media monster is there to flap the other side of the behemoth. MSNBC, CNN on the other side, rails against Fox News for creating and/or promoting the New Tea Party, while failing to allude to the original Tea Party movement which had Ron Paul as it’s ersatz leader.

They are yelling at each other like sibling rivals, when they could be talking about the real issues and moving the conversation forward. After all, we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, yet Royal Republicans and Democrats cannot see eye to eye on just about anything. These people would rather have you believe that the Halls of Congress and Business are filled with well-meaning people who would do otherwise if it were not for the ‘absurdity of human behavior.’

The Elites Architects would have us believe that ‘The Masses’ are the main cause of our own demise. The ignorant, huddled masses who are misled by shiny baubles and promises of instant wealth and happiness. According to Zakaria’s philosophy, the people’s immature “fantasies” are at the heart of most of our socio-political problems. Z might even believe in this nonsense, these modern elite media pundits are not as well-rounded and thoughtful as they would have you believe.

Z and his cohorts are not grizzled veterans with years of investigative reporting and ‘on the ground’ experience, but chiseled professional Ivy Leageurs who are groomed for the corporate boardrooms and game-rooms that are the revolving door of the Oligopolistic House of Cards.

The sad truth is, they treat us like spoiled children who watch too much TV because theylive in the center of that TV World they are trying to project onto us. This is mostly a case of their projection, which when projected from their projection screen TV’s, projects their shallow understanding of reality onto our realities.

All this nonsense of theirs would be quite suspicious if the Duo-Oligopolics were not already outed by most political analysts who are already onto the fake Dem\Rep paradigm which hides the big players behind the scenes. Z is not only on the front lines of the debate, manipulating and distorting public opinion through his CNN show and GPS Blog, but is also deeply ensconced in the behind the scenes machinations that masquerade as public policy.

Z belongs to this new breed of International Globalists, many of which are now foreign born but are still mostly Ivy League educated, and usually from prominent families who are already aligned with either a conservative or liberal ideology. If they toe the line, they are then recruited by the Think Tanks and Media Outlets who then push their well-crafted and researched ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ viewpoints from the left or right side of the aisle into the public discourse.

The names and faces may change but this type of modern media paradigm has been prevalent since the 1990’s, when the FCC allowed the corporate takeover of our media, and prevails with the mass monopolizing and gentrification of most of our beloved mind and soul-scapes at this point.

Now to the original article in question with a bit of background on Mr Fareed Zakaria.

Fareed was born in Mumbai, India in 1964 to a politician father and a journalist mother. He earned a BA from Yale and a Phd in Political Science from Harvard then of course worked for the major media outfits such as Newsweek and now sits atop his perch at CNN, where has hosted Fareed Zakaria GPS since 2008.

Z all too willingly jumps on the Donald Trump bashing bandwagon and exposes himself as either a naive scrutinizer of the American political scene, or a sinister neo-globalist who is obviously trying to muddy the waters of an otherwise serious debate with the politics of obfuscation.

Ever since ‘The Don’ ‘threw his hair into the ring’ and brought up the ‘birther issue’, he has been under constant attack by the left-wing of the duo-oligopoly and their spin machines, while being pseudo-supported by the right-wing. Set your wash cycle for whites, or color safe, and spin spin spin.

Although I have not been following Z or any other of the MSM players on the field as of late, I am even more disheartened than usual at this ‘hit piece’ he has tried to pass off on the mostly unsuspecting public. Perusing the 1000+ comments under his article remind me that I am not the only one who is on to him. If I were to write a disingenuous piece that would smear Trump, while reducing the importance of American Populist figures and movements, this would be it.

The article begins here, in italics, with my commentary embedded for those who dare venture into the murky depths of this nefariousness, masking as otherwise wisdom and good-sense.

ARTICLE BEGINS-Bold headlines are his.

“A number of you have been asking me on Facebook, Twitter and iReport what I think about Donald Trump, the ‘birther’ issue and the Republican presidential field. Here are my thoughts:

1. Donald Trump’s appeal is based on a fantasy

“Americans have always had an appetite for a populist, non-politician who promises to cut through the mess in Washington and provide simple, commonsense solutions to the problems ailing the United States.”

“The peculiar American twist is that the populists tend to be billionaires. People think the very rich are immune to the usual pressures in government. In some cases this turns out to be true (Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a good example).”

“But, fundamentally, this is wishful thinking bordering on fantasy. The mess we’re in is not a product of a handful of idiotic politicians engaged in venal behavior. The problem is that Americans want low-taxes and lots of government services.”

Z reduces everyone’s realistic desires for politicians to represent the people’s interests. While American Populists of the past such as Huey Long, or more recently Ross Perot have captured the naive “fantasies” of a large swath of the public, most American Populists have not been billionaires or even millionaires as Z asserts. Huey Long was certainly not a billionaire, Kucinich neither. Let’s refresh Z’s memory with some definitions.

The popular definition of a Populist:

“a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people. • a person who holds, or who is concerned with, the views of ordinary people.”

“a member of the Populist Party, a U.S. political party formed in 1891 that advocated the interests of labor and farmers, free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, and government control of monopolies.”

Z seems to reduce the American Populist Movement to Donald Trump, Mayor Bloomberg and Ross Perot, while recent Populists such as Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, John Edwards, Ralph Nader, Jesse Ventura, Ron Paul are ignored in his analysis.

The founders of legendary Populist parties, such as Teddy Roosevelt leading the Progresive Party of 1912, and Huey Long with his Share the Wealth movement of 1933-35 are the beginning of the American Populist movements, but even Ronald Reagan could be accused of populist tendencies.

Z reduces the Populist movements to suit his and his benefactors needs, hoping that most people will not do the research or have the ability to deconstruct his methods. This is the updated elitist philosophy that says “people only read the headlines” or “reality is too complicated for the masses so we must direct them,” both of which are shallow points of view.

What’s egregious is that Z dares to accuse the American people of living in a “fantasy world” where Populist heroes like Donald Trump or Ross Perot are merely caricatures of their naive distorted dreams, and it is his duty to remind of our ignorance.

You have to be wealthy to run as a Populist now because it is hard to raise money outside the Dem/Rep Big Tent System, which excludes most independents from even debating the chosen few handpicked contestants. Somehow Z misses this angle which really weakens his argument.

While people like Trump are a new breed of politician who have celebrity status, he is not one of the elite cadre of institutional professional politicians, but is a NY boy made international star. Donald Trump is a danger to the establishment, he likes to speak his mind and is a savvy businessman who is unafraid of the media.

‘The Don’ graduated from Wharton Business School, but according to Z, he is not educated enough in the reality of international politics that only a Harvard Phd can provide. Although Z might be concerned that Trump has little geo-political experience, neither does Mitt Romney, whom Z feels is a “credible guy.’

Trump is not a credible guy according to Z, but what credentials is Z using? Is it that Trump does not know how to play the inside Washington game that well, that his business and TV experience will not be enough to deal with the political finesse that our Insider Politicians are so adept at. So where has all this political finesse got us, not any closer to solving any of the important issues of the day but further and deeper into the muck of economic and socio-political turmoil, now on a grand scale and continuing to spiral out of control. Not to worry though, Obama is at he wheel and Romney might create an interesting conversation about nationalized health care, so Z will be happy with his “credible guy” pageant…hmmm…no comment.

Z also tries to come off as good fiscal conservative and neo-liberal realist but behind his wide-eyed zeal and assumed expertise lies an opportunist. Zakaria is a transnational globalist who is more than willing to use his skills to help the Duo-Oligopoly hide their schemes behind our tele-vision daydreams.

Mr Zakaria constantly scolds and admonishes the ‘American People’ for not working hard enough, or not being realistic enough in their endeavors. I am sure Mr Zakaria knows about ‘tightening his belt’ of course, his Ivy League credentials and telegenics are all he needs to get our heads to nod at the scoldings.

Next he wags his finger at us about how unrealistic we are to demand that Medicare be left alone and that there is no broad middle class increase in taxation.

“If you look at the recent polls, most Americans think there should be no changes to Medicare and no broad increases in taxation. This is magical mathematics. There is no way to make the budget work without doing both of these things – or at least one of them.”

Of course, that the tax cuts to the rich were extended and the out of control Military/Industrial/Prison Complex is off the table, the only reasonable solution is to cut Medicare. I am sure Z was out there on the front lines of the media establishment in their assurances that the ‘public option’ was magical thinking as well when the people petitioned for it.

Forget about the Wall St bailouts and the Iraq war, that is the cold hard hand of reality taking care of those who determine these things, the people in their fantasies are naive about geo-politics and are fiscally irresponsible. And guys like Z will steer us to accept things for how they are, and then admonish us when we get too optimistic or fall prey to our tendency towards “magical thinking.”

“The reason people like Donald Trump have appeal is they seem to promise that through their superior business talent they will magically solve problems and save Americans from having to make hard choices. That’s a fantasy. It’s never going to happen.”

Wrong Z.

People like Donald Trump have appeal because he is not part of the professional political and media establishment like Fareed Zakaria and his friends are. These socio-political priests who look down on us now from 52 inch Plasma screens think they are going to get away with this nonsense. The emperor still has no clothes, even in high-def. Sorry.

Fareed desperately wants to get through our heads that we are fantastical “magical thinkers” who need to grow up. This is a line that a tired conservative like George Will would take, it is pure nonsense. Like so many others in the establishment media, Mr Zakaria likes to portray Americans as fantasists, who live their lives through a TV fantasy world, but the absurd truth is, he is the one living in the fantasy world.

His is a fantasy world where someone who has no real world experience outside Ivy League academia and mainstream corporate owned media is the harbinger of reality. Zakaria and others feel they are entitled to talk down to us, and he hopes we are all impressed by his credentials and telegenic demeanor and do not see through this ‘mirage’ of wisdom.

When the ‘hall of mirrors’ come down, we are left with just another banal attempt at mis-informing and manipulating information for nefarious purposes.

Next ‘Z’ uses a new tactic from the Demo-crat playbook, “When an opponent questions Obama, or any other Demo-crat who is of color, using the ‘race card’ is recommended. It is referred to as a ‘Trump Card’, in essence, Trump’s reputation is destroyed by his namesakes overt meaning. As if Z could ever be so clever, and one should know, “no need to be clever when your hand is on the lever.”

Now that Z has scolded you for your magical thinking, he is ready to show you the reality of Trump’s racism, which is of course ‘coded’…oooohhhhh!

2. The ‘birther’ issue is coded racism

“Then there is the ‘birther’ issue. I regard this as coded racism, frankly. I don’t think there’s any other word for it.”

There are plenty of other words for it Fareed. While there are plenty of racists in this country to go around, the elite medias love to exaggerate the race issue on both sides. Z and others on the professional left love to hurl insults at the people on the right, knowing full well that the views of the actual people are closer to the middle. Social issues such as abortion or religion are used to segregate the lower classes into more manageable divisions. It all seems so real now, the media has been creating this divide for decades…people are desperate and angry, and it shows.

Next……

“For goodness’ sake, George Stephanopoulos displayed Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth on network TV and this rumor still doesn’t die. Put it this way: If the President was a white man named John Smith with the other background issues being the same – foreign student father, mother in Hawaii, etc. – would there be any of these dark insinuations? Trump should be ashamed of himself. But then, I suppose, he wouldn’t be Donald Trump.”

“For goodness’ sake”….really Z? I think “aw shucks” would be the colloquialism to ingratiate yourself us silly Americans.

According to Zakaria’s logic, Obama is a person of color…Donald Trump questions the legitimacy of his birth certificate…that proves he is a racist. Zakaria”s “John Smith” argument is a “straw man”argument if there ever was one.

There is conveniently no modern American President who had such an international upbringing, but that is of course besides the point. If Obama was white, nobody would care that his father was Russian, and he was born in Alaska and raised for years in Denmark? Really, nobody would raise an eyebrow?

Z assures us that these are “dark insinuations”, which sounds a bit racist to me, it sounds like coded racism actually.

“I don’t think that the ‘birther’ issue the real appeal of Trump, anyway. It has just helped Trump get free media and rise up in the polls. His real appeal is the fantasy that he can somehow get us out of the mess we’re in.”

So Donald is in desperate need of negative attention, which is what he is mostly getting from the press now that he is outed as a ‘birther?’ Trump is a savvy businessman, he is not going to grasp at straws.

Of course the birther issue is not the main issue anyway but just happens to be the one that Z can use keep the Trump campaign grounded should it gain too much steam. While they may want to attack him with everything should he get a ‘hair of steam’ going, they know that he is good ratings, which at the end of the day is what matters. They will of course play this ping-pong game with us till the cows come home, just as their masters sell arms to both sides of the war.

“The reality, however, is that only we can get us out of the mess we’re in.”

Who is “we” Fareed?

He wants US in on the decisions maybe…not the same US that you have been accusing of magical thinking and living in a fantasy land? Oh, I guess he means “WE” as in “WE the people shall foot the bill? While the same time allowing “we”-him and his friends, to tell us where to send the money.

3. The Republican presidential field is weak

“I think the most serious Republican candidate is Mitt Romney. He has run a big business. He was the governor of a big state. But he’s probably disqualified from the Republican nomination because his healthcare plan is too close to Obama’s.”

Of course Mitt Romney, never mind that he is a Mormon, no problem, he is the establishment candidate par excelllance. Ron Paul is of course crazy because he is not approved by Harvard/Yale establishment, or even the Republican establishment, even though he is from Texas.

Funny, Fareed is always saying how bad the Republicans are, but he must mean the stupid voters, he still likes the establishment candidate. You would think that Z would like someone who was outside the establishment. Ron Paul is an astute politician who is is very popular with independents, and he is also a practicing medical physician.

“I think this is unfortunate because he would spur a serious debate if he were the nominee. I don’t agree with everything he says. (He’s said some pretty nutty stuff about Islamic extremism and terrorism). But I do think he’s a credible guy who could plausibly be a good President.”

Fareed does not need to say why he is “credible guy” but he would know.

“Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels strike me as minor figures who are unlikely to have the kind of firepower that you would need to take on a sitting President.‘

“And Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are ideological statements that fire up the base but would be overwhelmingly rejected by the American people. If either of these two were nominated, it would say that the Republican Party was more interested in being true to its perceived causes than in actually winning elections. This has not historically been true of the Republican Party, which has tended to be a more practical party.”

Of course Ron Paul is not even mentioned. How odd…or rather…how obvious.

4. President Obama is in good shape“The single most important factor determining a president’s reelection is the economy. And through a combination of good crisis management and luck, I think Obama will end up entering the 2012 campaign stretch with an American economy that’s improving, which is probably more important than everything else.”

Of course Z, Obama is your man, Wall St loves him. All the bankers and corporate CEO’s love the man, why not you?

“So those are my thoughts. I’d love for you to continue the conversation below, and to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also send me video questions through iReport.”

The master at work. Never has their been, or never will their be a greater example of the merging of the spiritual and the physical. In beauty, grace and depth, Bruce Lee is on his own island.

One of our greatest tragedies on par with the losses of the Kennedy’s, John Lennon, MLK. Bruce Lee is the epitome of what can be achieved with hard work, determination and grace.

This scene is from “Enter the Dragon”. Bruce’s best known work. There are so many dynamics to talk about and I will probably elaborate in depth at a later time. I write from memory as I have seen the movie twenty times.

It is the beginning of the movie and Bruce is teaching at a Shaolin Monastery in China. In the scene before this you will see Bruce do an amazing flip over the outstretched arms of ten monks, after he defeats the great vaudeville martial artist Sammo Hung in a demonstration.

He then sits down for tea with a Mr Braithewaite, a British Intelligence Agent who is sent to enroll Bruce in the effort to take down a Mr Han. Mr Han is the evil guy that gave Bruce those famous bloody tiger claw marks on his chest at the end of the movie. I could get into all the socio-political ramifications of Bruce’s life and this movie but, I will save it for another time. An example of one of the ‘slings and arrows’ that took down Bruce is the directors insistence that the agent’s name be Braithewaite, even though Bruce had a hard time pronouncing it. What makes people do this to the great ones, even other artists? Bruce still had a lot to teach us, but the death by a thousand cuts or rather a thousand ninja stars is what took him. Not the ‘brain aneurysm from an allergic reaction to aspirin’ that is in the file.

Bruce was always haunted by a sinister and powerful dark force. The force took the form of a giant samurai in the biopic “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.” Which is also the iconography that Terry Gilliam used for his heroes nemesis in “Brazil”, but I digress.

You cannot tell here the toll that everything had taken on Bruce, but he had lost much weight by the time he was making this movie. Why were so many people intimidated by a man who only stood 5’7 and spoke softly? His energy and charisma were probably the cause. You would be amazed at the effect that quiet, powerful, spiritual energy has on those who have agendas and are motivated by the rusty gears of their egos or worse. They squeak and squirm.

Now the fact that Bruce only made four or five movies, three of which are in Chinese before his tragic death in 1973, makes me cry, he was only 33. The fact that the 70’s TV show “Kung Fu” was his original idea, and that he could have starred in it if it weren’t for racist attitudes in Hollywood and elsewhere, is the biggest tragedy of all. Kwai Chang Caine, as played by David Carradine is one of the great TV characters of all time. It went on for 4 or more years and while David was good in the role, Bruce would have taken it to another level. Despite his suspicious and tragic death, the real tragedy is that we would have had 80 or more hour long episodes of Bruce showcasing his talent and art, if it weren’t for the racist attitudes of those in charge.

His death is controversial but it is obvious that racism and stress led to his early departure. The depth of his ‘emotional content’ could not overcome the pain and sorrow that an unjust and uncaring society places on those who try to make positive change. Bruce gave it his all though, and will live on forever as one of our great cultural and spiritual heroes.

Bruce was a great artist in many realms. His martial art choreography is unmatched, and his drawings and writings on the Tao are sublime. He was schooled in art and philosophy and his charm and charisma were off the charts.

In this video Bruce is able to show his beauty and grace in a softer way. Instead of whirlwind spin kicks sending an army to the ground…it is “Lao’s time”. Lao Tzu is an ‘old master’, the author of the Tao Te Ching, which can be translated as ‘the way of virtue.” The Tao also has a mystical quality about it, a oneness with nature and the natural elements which allow us to experience eternal truths and live more in harmony and accordance with natures laws. Chinese Transcendentalism if you will. Lao Tzu and Bruce Lee are great demonstrators of the beauty and power of ‘the way.”

Now in the video, a young student has come for a lesson, and a lesson he will get, but it is softer than it looks. The little slaps you see are not hard, but are meant to focus attention, to snap one out of it.

What you see first is Bruce and his student bowing to one another with equal respect. This is very rare in western society. Bruce is meeting his student as an equal, the bow and respect is for spirit, not hierarchy.

He then asks the student to kick him, which he does and Bruce easily moves away. He then says, “Again with emotional content.”

Again the kid kicks and it is a better effort but Bruce is still not satisfied. He wants emotional content, not anger from his student. Again he asks the kid to try again, “with meaning.”

“That’s it. How did it feel to you?” he asks the kid.

The kid replies, “Let me think.”

Bruce slaps him and gets in his face, “Don’t think! Feel!”

“It is like a finger pointing a way to the moon.”

The kid looks at finger and then get’s slapped again.

“Don’t concentrate on the finger”says Bruce, “or you will miss all the heavenly glory.”

“Do you understand?” he asks gently.

One of my favorite scenes from any movie, Bruce uses his voice, face and grace to ‘point to’ the beautiful metaphor of ‘the finger and the moon.’ It is a way to show how focusing on the trappings and peripherals of the activity rather than grasping its essence, is akin to focusing on the finger instead of the moon. The finger is there to ‘point’ the way, but the essence is the moon, or the experience of being. It is akin to Yoda’s famous quote, “there is no try, only do” or the sport’s analogy of ‘be the ball.’